11-13 May 2018, Gregynog Hall

The Thirtieth Annual Conference
of the Association for Welsh Writing in English

Keynote Speakers

Creative Keynote Speaker: Alys Conran, winner of the 2017 Wales Book of the Year for Pigeon

The final keynote will be announced shortly: please visit the AWWE website for latest updates.

Call for Papers

​“‘Home’. When you say a word slowly it can seem suddenly strange. ‘Home’. Is that really how you spell it? And what does it mean? ‘Hoam’. ‘Hohm’.” – John Barnie, Footfalls in the Silence: A Memoir (2014)

Our thirtieth anniversary conference will ask what ‘home’ means within the context of the English-language literary traditions of Wales. In his 1977 volume Space and Place, Yi-Fu Tuan suggested that home is ‘the focal point of a cosmic structure’, and argued that ‘Human groups nearly everywhere tend to regard their own homeland as the center of the world.’ More recently, Michael Allen Fox has proposed that ‘Self and home are inseparable elements, with each depending on the other for its existence and properties.’ He has also emphasised concepts of familiarity and belonging: ‘In English, “home” stands for a place of residence, belonging, and attachment’ and is bound up with ideas of ‘familiarity, attraction, warmth of feeling, pride, a special sense of bonding’. The primary emotional content of home has similarly been articulated by Alison Blunt and Robyn Dowling who note that home is not just a ‘site’, but is crucially ‘an idea and an imaginary imbued with feelings’.

The annual RS Thomas Literary Festival celebrates RS Thomas in the Welsh seaside town where he was vicar and wrote some of his best poetry.

The theme of the 2016 Festival is “Convergence of Creativity.” We will explore the influence of RS Thomas’s wife, Elsi Eldridge, an accomplished artist, on his work. We will also examine Thomas’s influence on other artists and how Thomas’s poetry was inspired by modern art.

The RS Thomas Literary Festival features the launch of the latest collection of unpublished Thomas poems, Too Brave to Dream. Presentations from three respected Thomas scholars, an evening concert in St. Hywyn’s Church, a walk through the landscape that inspired RS Thomas, poetry performances, an invitation to RS and Elsi’s studio, and an art exhibition complete the festival. This year we are also joined by the Coleridge in Wales project.

The artist and poet David Jones (1895-1974) considered The Rime of the Ancient Mariner to be ‘one of the great achievements of English poetry, and not only great but unique’.

In 1929 Jones made copper engravings for an illustrated edition of the poem, and these prints are displayed in the National Museum of Wales, Cardiff this summer as a response to the Coleridge in Wales festival.

We are delighted that leading international authority on David Jones, Prof. Tom Dilworth has offered to give this illustrated lecture as part of the Coleridge in Wales journey, in association with Aberystwyth University’s David Jones Centre.

Discover how the illustrations by David Jones give fresh insight into the structure and interpretation of Rime of The Ancient Mariner.

For more information, or to book a ticket, please contact Luke Thurston (lut@aber.ac.uk).

Those attending the event may also be interested in a current exhibition at the National Library of Wales:

Words of War: Conflict in Welsh Literature

23 January – 30 July 2016

For centuries, Welsh poets and prose writers have depicted the experience of war, either by celebrating victories or mourning defeat. This exhibition focuses on four historic conflicts from the sixth to the seventeenth centuries – both battles and skirmishes. Poignant eyewitness accounts and later reactions by artists such as Aneirin and David Jones, Bleddyn Fardd and Gerallt Lloyd Owen will be shown alongside the narrative testimonies of contemporary and later chroniclers. Let the poets take you to Catraeth, Cilmeri, Bosworth and the Somme.

The Ursula Masson Memorial Lecture 2016

Dr Kirsti Bohata (Associate Professor, Swansea University)

‘Industrial Fiction by Women Writers in Wales, 1880-1914’

Tuesday 8 March (for International Women’s Day) at 6.00-9.00pm

Ty Crawshay, Treforest Campus, University of South Wales

The lecture will take place in the Moot Court, TC13, at 6pm to be followed by a wine reception and buffet in TC30 (the Zobole Room) and the university museum’s art gallery space, Oriel y Bont, from 7.15pm.

Dr Kirsti Bohata is Associate Professor of English Literature and Director of CREW, the Centre for Research into the English Literature and Language of Wales, at Swansea University.

The lecture focuses on industrial fictions by women writers in Wales. Fictional representations of the heavy industries are scarce before the twentieth century, but there is a distinctive body of writing by Welsh women that does engage with industrial life. These novels portray injuries and colliery disasters, disability and care, strikes and class conflict, as well as recurring themes of nationalism and cross-class fraternity.

Wales and the World:
Re-Framing the Literature of Wales in an International Context

The Twenty-Eighth Annual Conference of the Association for Welsh Writing in English

Friday 1st April – Sunday 3rd April 2016
Gregynog Hall, Newtown

Call for Papers
Wales has a distinctive national culture. The 2011 Census, however, indicated that the Welsh, like other British nationals, were becoming more culturally diverse. This is not surprising: the effects of the World imposing itself on Wales – industrialisation in the nineteenth century, for example – are continuous and impact profoundly on its literature.

Simultaneously, the Welsh have reached outwards beyond the confines of their homeland: as explorers and travellers, in Africa and South America for instance. Wales, too, ‘sells’ itself through ‘exported’ literature and the arts: the Dylan Thomas centenary celebrations in 2015 provided a timely reminder of a national literature that is inter-national, not only within the U.K. but further afield in Europe and across the globe.

North American Association for the Study of Welsh Culture and History (NAASWCH)
International Conference on Welsh Studies

Harvard University
20-22 July 2016

The NAASWCH Program Committee seeks diverse perspectives on all aspects of Wales and Welsh culture – as well as proposals focused on the Welsh in North America – from many disciplines, including history, literature, languages, art, social sciences, political science, philosophy, music, and religion. NAASWCH invites participation from academics, postgraduate/graduate students and independent scholars from North America, the United Kingdom, and elsewhere.

Many thanks to all of those who have already submitted abstracts for the inaugural MONC conference. Upon request, we have extended the CFP deadline to 30 June. We are especially keen to receive proposals relating to the visual arts and to women artists and writers. Please follow the links to download a copy of the revised CFP in ENGLISH and in WELSH.

A Century On: Modernist Studies in Wales

The Inaugural Modernist Network Cymru Conference

Swansea University, Monday 7 September 2015

Keynote speaker: Professor Angharad Price (Bangor University)

The 2010s have been a busy decade for modernist scholars. In 2010, the inaugural BAMS conference considered Virginia Woolf’s (in)famous assertion that ‘On or about December 1910, human character changed’; in 2013, BBC Radio 3 ran a series of programmes celebrating Paris’ annus mirabilis, exemplified by the 1913 premiere of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring; and in 2014 we celebrated Dylan Thomas’ birth in a year-long series of events.

Now, in 2015, as we mark 100 years since Caradoc Evans’ landmark short story collection, My People, it seems a good time to stop and take stock of the past, present and future of both modernism and modernist studies as a discipline.

This inaugural conference, to be held at Swansea University, invites scholars from Wales and beyond to reflect upon modernism and its legacies. As the first Modernist Network Cymru (MONC) event, it aims to showcase the range and diversity of research into modernism happening in Wales today. MONC brings together scholars and professionals working on modernism in Wales to encourage collaboration and communication; as such, we welcome interdisciplinary proposals on any aspect of modernism, as defined in the widest sense. We particularly welcome scholars working on Welsh modernist writers and artists, as well as modernist art and writing in Wales.

Possible topics could include but are not limited to:

Networks of modernist activity

Local modernisms

Welsh modernism

Geographies or topographies of modernism

Modernism and identity

Modernism and periodization

Chronologies and genealogies of modernism

Contemporary modernisms and neomodernisms

Centenaries and memorialisation

Definitions and theories of modernism

Modernist studies and interdisciplinarity

The future of modernist studies

Individual modernist theorists and practitioners in Wales and beyond

The event will also be an opportunity for participants to collaborate with us on setting the agenda and scope for future MONC activity and events.

Proposals for papers (20 minutes) should include a summary of the proposed paper (300 words), the speaker’s contact details, and a short bio (100 words).

Proposals should be sent to modernistnetworkcymru@gmail.com by 30 June 2015.

For more information and enquiries, please visit modernistnetworkcymru.org.

Conference organising team:

Elaine Cabuts (Aberystwyth University)

Elizabeth English (Cardiff Metropolitan University)

John Goodby (Swansea University)

Diana Wallace (University of South Wales)

Emma West (Cardiff University)

This conference is kindly supported by the Learned Society of Wales and the Research Institute for Arts and Humanities, Swansea University.